The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘tarot cards’

I have a new set of oracular divination cards. I call them this because they’re not really tarot cards in the usual sense. They describe themselves as an Oracle card set and I will go with this description. Especially given that I am going to Delphi soon to see THE Oracle. Seems appropriate that I should “gem up” on this ovatic tradition.

The set was devised by that eminent Celtic mythology scholar and druidical wise one – John Matthews. Of course, he got Will Worthington to do the artwork for the cards. Any sensible person in this field would do. I have several other sets of tarot cards featuring his excellent artwork (e.g. The Wildwood Tarot, The Druidcraft Tarot) and I highly recommend them for anyone in the field of druidic divination.

The Camelot Oracle cover

As you know, though, my work has been taking on an Arthurian bent over the past few years. Since 2010, when I encountered Merlin as a tutor and guide along my spiritual path, I have found that I have been working through Arthurian archetypes each year. This year seems like no exception to that, but trying to find information about Galahad/Gwalchaved is very difficult. Hence, I felt I needed a meditation tool that would allow me to get into “the spirit” of this archetype. When I saw the Camelot Oracle, and that it was written by John Matthews, then I needed only a split second to decide to buy it.

I have only read the manual about them – I haven’t tried using them yet. This being The Quiet Time I’m not wanting to stir things up just yet. I will get acquainted with the set first, for the next few weeks, and then when it comes to that all-important Imbolc or Spring Equinox moment when the year begins in earnest I will do my first draw with these cards and then report back on their efficacy for me.

As the set uses the Arthurian Archetypes I fully expect that I will be aligned to their output. I need first to confirm that my “champion” for this year is what I expect it to be. Once this is done I’m off – full flow – and let’s see where it takes me this year.

I rarely use Tarot Cards. That’s mainly because they are so damned spookily accurate! They make me nervous. There was a spell when Kal was using the cards regularly, for himself and for others, and he found the same. He told me how it was useful for obtaining the kind of information about a situation that couldn’t be obtained (or would take a very long time to narrow down) with dowsing. So, I gave it a go. I learned a single layout, and then I used a couple of reference books to interpret the cards. One word – accurate. Those of you who may have tried this will know what I mean. This is not your “Sun Sign Astrology” tabloid newspaper kind of accurate. This is the “are you reading my mind?” type of accurate.

Of course Tarot cards are symbols, symbols of some human psychology, and there are levels of interpretation required to make something meaningful come out of a reading. Yet, whenever I have done it, and I can count the number of times still on one hand, I have been flabbergasted, nay overwhelmed by the pertinence, the serendipity, the degree of coincidence, however you want to term it. It was spot on. Whether for me, or for someone else. I have been told that I “have the gift” with the cards. Well, so did Solitaire (Jane Seymour) in the James Bond film “Live and Let Die” and look what happened to her! (Actually, what did happen to her, I can’t remember….?)

'Pick a card..any card ...(except that one)'

Why Druids should use Tarot

Good question. Sounds like a statement but it’s also a question – why should druids use Tarot, or any method of divination? Well, the druid revivalist culture seems to purport that there is some historical precedence for a link between forms of augury or divination and the druid class. The Romans (and where would we be without the Romans, with their aqueducts, laws, sewage systems….etc) included instances in their reports of Britain about the scrying and divining abilities of the druids.

Don’t let history (even if it was dubious political history) be your only guide, however. There are other sound reasons to adopt a form of divination. Is dowsing not a form of scrying, of obtaining knowledge from a gnostic source, that can easily be turned towards divination tasks too? Indeed it can. The humble dowsing rod can be used for many purposes, but the further away from dowsing in connection with the land the less credible the results feel to me. This may be a personal thing, however, because I admit to having used dowsing for divination, even if the results have always seemed less reliable and more likely to change. But then, that’s the future for you – always changing!

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Section 7. Summary of the Year

In order to organise our thoughts Kal and I came up with some questions the answers to which we hoped might summarise the way that year has gone for us – what were the bits we expected, what exceeded our expectations, and which things arose to meet us on this path that we didn’t anticipate? Here are my answers to this year’s questions.

What did I think I was going to learn?

1. Whether specific periods of the year are more energetic than others, and whether those periods align to the calendrical eight-fold year.
2. How stone circles work in terms of their energy
3. Whether specific geology affects the energetic responses from sites

By the summer of 2009 I had already established to my satisfaction that there was a difference in the strengths of energies at the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. I was sure that there was more powerful sun energy (i.e. stronger male energy) at the Summer Solstice. The Spring and Autumn Equinoxes were very similar in strength, and were a balance of male and female earth energies. At the Winter Solstice the male energies were very weak, as was the Sun. The female energies fluctuated only in relation to the strength of the Moon and the input from nearby trees, again weaker in Winter.

Determining any objective means of measurement was difficult, as our own energy levels seemed to be a factor in how well we could dowse or do energy work at a site, however a scale of measurement (strength from 1-10) seemed to work for the purposes of obtaining some data that could be compared between sites. The solstice and equinox dates depended upon the quality of the Sun to determine the amount of additional energy was at the site compared to our visits to them on other dates.

The Celtic Festival dates (Lammas, Beltane, Samhain and Imbolc) in between those times were much harder to figure out. These dates seems to depend upon the position of the Moon for their effects upon ancient sites., rather than the Sun’s effect. I will be posting much more on this soon, complete with a table of the relative energy levels at various sites dowsed this year.

Further theories have emerged concerning the operation of energies at stone circles and other sites too. See the Earth Energies and Ancient Sites Summary posts for details on those.

We have kept a weather-eye on the geology of sites whilst dowsing this year. It started for me in Carnac when I discovered that the stone rows were placed along a shelf of rock quite different from the surrounding geology of the rest of the nearby coastline. We have concurred with the popular dowsing theory that geological faulting is important to the situation of ancient sites, as is often the presence of water, but we do not wholly agree with the necessity of water (or a ‘blind spring’ formation) being present at all ancient neolithic sites. Some major sites such as Stonehenge and The Rollright Stones do have this water formation, however, and we think these popular sites may have led to the popularity of the idea amongst the dowsing fraternity that such a formation is necessary to a strong energy site. We do not find this to be true.

'CARNAC: Des Pierres Pour Les Vivants' by Pierre Mereaux

What’s been the surprise?

1. Crop circles being designed by some intelligence beyond the confines of this planet – expected them to be of human design and manufacture.
2. The energetic and healing potential of running water – Pistyll Rhaeadr and Viktor Schauberger convinced me of this at different ends of the year. At Pistyll Rhaeadr waterfall my wife’s twisted ankle was healed in minutes. Later I read Schauberger’s theories on the properties of water and I understood how this could have come about.
3. A spiritual pilgrimage being worthwhile doing, and not some soulless religious historical trail as I had imagined it to be.

1. Astrology - There is a correlation, a link, between the relative positions of the stars and a human being. My natal chart is stunningly accurate in assessing my personality traits. Kal and I have also discovered that we are energetically linked to particular planets – Kal to Mercury and myself to Venus. We are more energetically ‘loaded’ or ‘charged’, and more energy work is possible, when our respective planets are visible. I have tracked this since the beginning of the year and have each dowsing response confirms this.
2. Elemental beings and cloud sylphs – I see some this year on four separate occasions and each time I was stunned by the effect – this was no mere simulacrum. Seeing faces in the clouds must be the third and conclusive qualifying factor in any signs of madness developing – that much I do appreciate, but nevertheless, they have been present at quite specific times of high energy.

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Section 6 : Esoteric learning

Originally I called this section ‘Miscellaneous’ but on reading back through it again I thought that moniker did it a dis-service, because the information in here is really more about various pieces of esoteric learning that I have come across in the last year. Each piece is a piece of a larger puzzle. Each piece offers a tiny glimpse of this larger picture that I recognise now as Nature.

Many of the topics I had dismissed long ago when I had first looked at them in my youth. Coming back to them in later years, with more knowledge, more access to knowledge, and greater resources available to me, I have found that most of the topics have some element of value to me. I am always aware, however, that each subject in itself could consume a person and drive them to distraction, so I take their practical essence, learn some basic techniques or practice, then leave the wilder and wider areas to those who wish to become absorbed by them. To me they are all pieces of a larger puzzle.

6-1. Crop circles: Definitely something odd about them. Created using earth energies, and designed by some other unknown motivational force which seems to be external to the Earth (‘extra-terrestrial’ being in the sense of some intelligence that is not born of this planet, whatever that may be). I participated in some way in the triggering of the creation of a crop circle’s formation somehow when I passed by the place where one would shortly come to be produced. The site was in between two established earth energy sites on a ley line that I had visited that same day. Crop circles patterns are made to trigger a revelation in human consciousness, Whether this be on an individual or a more global basis is as yet unknown.

Knighton Hill crop circle

6-2. Tarot cards: I tried the tarot cards again properly this year, and under the guidance of Kal, who had learned them thoroughly. What I was surprised to learn was that they are a useful means of obtaining more information about the qualities and intentions of the sentient energies that we encounter. They are not, as we originally thought, the product of a deranged imagination. As one might expect they also are capable of reflecting one’s own psychology very well too, and have been a valuable tool for self-analysis. However, I use them sparingly, and am quite appalled sometimes by their accuracy. I started using a Celtic Cross formation, but went on to devise my own layouts for the cards, as befitted the situation I was asking about. I now exclusively use the Druidcraft Tarot from Stephanie & Philip Carr-Gomm, only because the symbols make sense to me.

Druidcraft Tarot

6-3. Salute of the Sun: Both Kal and I have observed separately and together a phenomenon that we call “The Salute of the Sun”. This refers to the sun coming out when we do something that progresses us along our spiritual path. For example, we may be visiting a stone circle on a cloudy dull day, but the moment we make our connection with Nature during meditation, and then ask a question whose answer indicates a new direction or an answer that will help us know more about a subject, then we have noticed that the Sun comes out from impossible angles to shine upon us. This has happened so often now that we can no longer simply call it coincidence. As we have trained ourselves to recognise significant signs, we feel this is the most significant, as it is never “looked for”, but always makes us feel reassured, and we smile to ourselves.

6-4. Intuition: Following intuition has guided us very well this year. There is little point in trying to intellectualise this. Something that started out as something to try has become something of a waymarker on our spiritual path. If we follow intuition it guides us well. If we ignore it then we have to work much harder to achieve things. If we follow it, new opportunities appear – if we ignore it they close off. Simple as that.

6-5. Sacred Geometry: Gardens and building designed by noted Freemasons contain elements of sacred number and geometry that enhance the energetic potential of their sites. They encode these principles and retain the ability to attract people, power, good fortune and wealth. This is the art of Feng Shui in action. This has informed us that there was a knowledge of the power of place and energy in the Western Mystery Tradition as well as the Eastern, and that it was highly active until quite recently, in the 20th Century, when these principles were seemingly ignored and “sick” buildings began to be built.

6-6. The Shining Ones: Whoever the Shining Ones were their principles of geometry and sacred site building are inherent in the design of ancient sites. When we dowse about the influence of this little-known group of humans upon the design of ancient sites it always comes back that their principles were encoded in the designs, but that they were not personally or directly involved in the building of most of the ‘provincial’ sites. We still have to check whether they were involved in the building of the major sites, such as Stonehenge. Still a mystery!

Bringers of Esoteric Knowledge

6-7. Healing With Water: Hydrotherapy has less to do with the mineral qualities of water, than with the energy generated from its source, the amount of light it is subjected to, and its movement. This concurs with my research of Viktor Schauberger’s work, as he notes that the movement of the water is paramount in determining its qualities. The amount of radiant energy that the water consumes seems also to be highly relevant – the sunlight and moonlight appears to affect the healing qualities of water greatly.

6-8. Orbs:  I never gave Orbs a second thought until I photographed a few accidentally. They keep being photographed on power centres in sacred sites. We don’t know what relevance they have right now, but we will have to do some more research into this topic. They cannot simply be dismissed as specks of dust, or the reflections of light on the camera lens. I took two identical pictures a second apart (guided by intuition) of the chamber inside West Kennett Long Barrow in identical conditions. One has no Orb, the other shows one quite clearly! This, I cannot explain.

Note the orb positioned above the feather at the back

6-9. Animal interest: Rather annoyingly cows are over-actively interested in dowsing, for some reason. This has disrupted our dowsing trips on a few occasions because if you let them they’ll come right over and actively interfere with the dowsing process, blocking your path, chasing you away, nudging your arms. It’s quite strange! What DO they think they’re doing?

6-10. Sound and colour frequency: At Long Meg stone circle we proved to ourselves that it is possible to correlate sound frequencies with the chakra rainbow spectrum of frequencies, thus demonstrating to us a correspondence between light and sound frequencies. Interesting, but has led us nowhere else yet.

6-11, Crystals: As well as being able to transform energy from the earth into a subtle energetic form (possibly via the action of water), they also have the power to concentrate that energy and store it. This makes crystals almost indispensable when working with subtle earth and radiant energies. I intend to study this further to try to describe this quality of crystals in a much more scientific way, but for now I merely want to point these qualities out, as this is the truly important information.

Gwas.